On Monday night, two Jezebel staffers with varying degrees of encyclopedic knowledge about the modern Bachelor universe watched the seventh episode of Colton Underwood’s season of The Bachelor. The wine was poured, and the virgin jokes flowed. This is their story.
Maria: Week seven and the gang’s in Colton’s hometown of Denver, Colorado. There were so many opportunities for everyone to get high as shit but that did not happen. Instead, we got a serious of incredibly innocuous events. Colton meets up with Season 20’s Bachelor, Ben Higgins, to talk about his dating process. Higgins is an obvious scammer and gives him no advice. Higgins is also single.
Tayshia gets the first one-on-one date, which leads me to believe she’s actually going to make it to the final three. Imagine if she’s our next Bachelorette. Imagine liking this franchise after this boring ass season! They eat oysters, ignoring the fact that they are in a landlocked state. They eat ice cream; they taste wine. It’s actually really sweet in a “Visit Denver”-ad sort of way.
While on the evening portion of their date, Colton tells Tayshia he trusts her and that he is worried about the warning last week’s losers gave him—that there are still women in the house who are not ready for an engagement. She names them: Cassie and Caelynn, who allegedly communicated to the group that they aren’t looking to say yes to a ring at the end of this, and would be so down to become the next Bachelorette. Tayshia is extremely honest, but it did feel a little out of character for her to throw some of the other ladies under the bus. Cassie and Caelynn’s reactions upon learning Tayshia told Colton she believes they aren’t ready for marriage were telling, but I did find her tattling weird nonetheless.
What did you think of Caelynn’s one-on-one?
Lisa: Colton takes Caelynn to go snowboarding on their one-on-one, despite the fact she has never done it before. The ABC livestream cut out for most of the actual snowboarding, but Colton seemed like an okay teacher in the two minutes that I actually saw.
Afterwards, Caelynn tries to convince Colton that Tayshia is a liar and that she is absolutely 100 percent ready to marry a man with whom she is currently on her second solo date. Colton spends most of the date looking as stressed out as I feel right before every episode of this show starts, when I’m deciding if I will finally be strong enough to give it up for good. You win this time, ABC. And so does Caelynn. Colton buys her defense and she gets a rose and one of those awkward private country concerts at the Red Rocks Ampitheater, which is actually kind of cool, even though I have never heard of Brett Young before.
Caelynn comes home and tells Cassie about the Tayshia drama she had to extinguish, and Cassie immediately prepares to go on the defense herself. Seems pretty fishy to me! Did you believe them?
Let us not forget Hannah B.’s sage advice to Colton on her way out: “Listen to people about things.” I can’t wait for that to be printed on a Forever21 t-shirt and passed off as a Marilyn Monroe quote in one week.
Maria: Not in the slightest. I think they probably did joke around and theorize about who will become the next Bachelorette—which should mean they’re not ready to lock it down with Colton—but I think being stuck inside on mansion house arrest while dozens of other women date your dude is insufferable, so they just talk about whatever. However, based on Caelynn’s animosity towards Tayshia, whose confrontation was much more brash, direct, and rude compared to how she approached Hannah B. earlier on in the season, is telling.
I loved the Red Rocks date—the first of the season where I’ve been like, yeah, this is how you do the fairytale romance thing. According to his website, Young was “the only Country act on Shazam’s ‘Emerging Artists of 2017,’” so take that information as you will.
Later, Hannah B. gets another one-on-one date, where Colton takes her to meet his family. I got the sense that his dad didn’t really care for her, or his mom, which is fine because he ended up eliminating her anyway. (In retrospect, why introduce her to your family? That seems needlessly cruel?)
And oh god, then it was the group date. What did you think?
Lisa: Let us not forget Hannah B.’s sage advice to Colton on her way out: “Listen to people about things.” I can’t wait for that to be printed on a Forever21 t-shirt and passed off as a Marilyn Monroe quote in one week.
Hannah G., Kirpa, Cassie, and Heather then head to a group date where only two of them will make it through to hometowns. Colton appears from the distance riding one of those trains they stick near a mall Santa to keep kids occupied. The ladies get on board and commute over to a picnic table in the woods. Heather pulls off the first genuine shock of the season and tells Colton almost immediately that she can’t bring him home to her family and has to bounce. I don’t blame her, she has many more people to kiss before settling down with one set of lips forever. She leaves alone on the train. She stood on the back car platform as it chugged away, were there no actual seats on board? How long is that ride? Someone get this girl a chair.
Kirpa tells Colton about her Cassie concerns and Cassie denies, denies, denies. The two get into a psuedo-screaming match where Cassie cannot form a coherent sentence. Colton tells the women he needs more time to figure out what he wants to do with the remaining two roses, so they move onto the night portion of the date.
That was seemingly only partially true, since Colton gives Hannah G. one of the two roses almost immediately after sitting down at the table. She then gets sent home for some reason while Colton figures out which of the other two women to keep, where she tells Caelynn and Tayshia about the day’s drama. Caelynn then takes it upon herself to interrupt the group date, walk upstairs without acknowledging Kirpa or Cassie, defend Cassie’s honor to Colton, and then walk back downstairs and out the door. Ummmmm whatthefuck?
Maria: I’m happy Heather’s departure happened on her own accord because no one should have to marry the first person they kiss. Or sleep with, for that matter.
Caelynn’s interruption was super strange and highly inappropriate—did she follow them? Is this restaurant in their hotel? How did she find them? How did she know to enter, immediately take a left and go upstairs to where Colton was hiding from confrontation? We don’t actually get to see what she said—only that she entered and left the room without acknowledging Cassie or Kirpa, perhaps to dramatize Colton’s decision. He picked Cassie, as we knew he would, as he has been horned up for her since week one, and sweet Kirpa goes home. Colton announces his choice by saying, “I have to continue to trust my gut… and be confident in the decisions that I make.” I disagree—his gut seems to tell him everyone is being honest with him at all times, even when what they’re saying is conflicting as hell?
Either way, next week brings a new episode and it’s hometowns baby! I can’t wait to watch Tayshia’s dad rip Colton a new one.